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2011 Television Awards Nominations

The nominations were announced today for the Philips British Academy Television Awards, which will take place on Sunday 22 May at London’s Grosvenor House, hosted by Graham Norton.

Matt Smith is nominated for Doctor Who

First nominations for Lynda Baron and Jessie Wallace

Four nominations for Misfits

Three nominations for Sherlock, Any Human Heart and The Road to Coronation Street

Sky receives its highest number of nominations ever, including the first nomination for a 3D programme

Two-time BAFTA winner Jim Broadbent takes on Sherlock Holmes, Doctor Who and Eric Morecambe in this year’s Leading Actor category. Broadbent is nominated for his performance as writer, spy and man of the world Logan Mountstuart in Any Human Heart alongside first-time nominees Matt Smith (Doctor Who) and Daniel Rigby (Eric and Ernie).

Benedict Cumberbatch is nominated for Leading Actor for his performance as Sherlock Holmes. His Watson, Martin Freeman is nominated for Supporting Actor. The programme is nominated for Drama Series.
Misfits’ four nominations are for Drama Series, New Media and Robert Sheehan and Lauren Socha are nominated for Supporting Actor and Actress.

The Road to Coronation Street is nominated for Single Drama and also has two nominations in the Supporting Actress category for Jessie Wallace and Lynda Baron who play Pat Phoenix and Violet Carson. This is the first nomination for both actresses. Lynda Baron’s comes after over 45 years in the industry.
Jim Broadbent’s co-star in Any Human Heart, Gillian Anderson, is nominated for Supporting Actress and the programme is also nominated for Drama Serial.

Brendan Coyle, who plays the stoic Bates in Downton Abbey is nominated for Supporting Actor. The programme is also nominated for Drama Series.

Vicky McClure and Johnny Harris are nominated for This Is England ’86 in the Leading Actress and Supporting Actor categories. Also nominated for Leading Actress are double BAFTA winner Anna Maxwell Martin for South Riding, Natalie Press for Five Daughters and Juliet Stevenson for Accused.

Host Graham Norton has his first nomination since 2002 in the Entertainment Performance category. The Graham Norton Show is nominated for Entertainment Programme alongside The X Factor, Have I Got News For You, which receives its eleventh nomination, and first-time nominee The Cube.

Stephen Fry gets his seventh nomination for Entertainment Performance for QI. Two-time winner Harry Hill is nominated again for his TV Burp and Rob Brydon is nominated for The Rob Brydon Show.

BAFTA Fellow Dawn French is nominated for Female Performance in a Comedy Programme for Roger and Val Have Just Got In. Also in this category, Katherine Parkinson receives her first BAFTA nomination for The IT Crowd; Miranda Hart is nominated for the eponymous Miranda; and Jo Brand is nominated for Getting On.

In the Male Performance in a Comedy Programme category Steve Coogan is nominated for playing Steve Coogan in The Trip; Steve was last nominated in 2003 for I’m Alan Partridge. Also nominated in this category are Tom Hollander for Rev, David Mitchell for Peep Show (his fourth nomination in this category, which he won in 2009). First-time BAFTA nominee James Buckley who plays Inbetweener Jay Cartwright completes the line-up.

Three new shows are nominated for Situation Comedy: The Trip, Rev and Mrs Brown’s Boys take on the long-running Peep Show, which has won this category once and been nominated a further four times.

Waterloo Road receives its first nomination in the Continuing Drama category. It is joined there by previous winners Casualty, Coronation Street and EastEnders.

The Single Drama category is contested by Morecambe and Wise biopic Eric and Ernie, I Am Slave, the extraordinary story of a Sudanese woman’s fight for freedom from modern-day slavery, The Special Relationship which traces the long-standing alliance between Tony Blair and Bill Clinton and The Road to Coronation Street, the epic story of one man’s struggle to make a programme that no one wanted at first, but which became one of Britain’s best loved shows.

Sci-fi dramas Being Human and Misfits (last year’s winner) take on hit period drama Downton Abbey and the new series of Sherlock mysteries for the Drama Series BAFTA.

The nominees for Drama Serial are: Mad Dogs, Sky One’s thriller about a group of old friends whose reunion holiday in Majorca quickly takes a turn for the surreal and dangerous; The Sinking of the Laconia, based on the true story of the ship sunk in World War II by a German U-Boat, which then surfaced against orders to rescue the civilian crew; The Promise, about a young woman who retraces her grandfather’s steps through Israel in an attempt to fulfil a promise he made over 60 years before; and Any Human Heart, the adaptation of William Boyd’s novel, which tells the extraordinary story of an ordinary life.

Facejacker, the new show from the BAFTA-winning creators of Fonejacker, is nominated for Comedy Programme. Also nominated are Catherine Tate’s Little Cracker, Matt Lucas and David Walliams’ Come Fly With Me and Harry and Paul, which won this category two years ago.

Mad Men returns to the International category, which it has won for the last two years, to take on Martin Scorsese’s prohibition-era drama Boardwalk Empire, the musical-comedy drama Glee and Danish crime thriller The Killing.

Four first-time nominees battle it out in the Features category: retail doyenne Mary Portas’ Mary Queen of Shops and chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s crusading series Hugh’s Fish Fight take on Dave Lamb’s sardonic commentary in Come Dine With Me and the unlikely pairing of Michael Buerk and Louie Spence in Pineapple Dance Studios.

This year’s Specialist Factual nominees cover a diverse range of subjects: Alan Bennett and the Habit of Art stepped behind the scenes of the iconic playwright’s latest theatrical work; Human Planet told stories of mankind’s relationship with the natural world; two hundred million year old reptiles were brought to life in Flying Monsters 3D; and Pompeii: Life and Death in a Roman Town revealed how the Pompeiians lived before Mount Vesuvius erupted.

In the Factual Series category, last year’s winner One Born Every Minute is up against Coppers, The Young Ones and Welcome to Lagos.

Four sensitive and moving films compete in the Single Documentary category: Between Life and Death, which follows the doctors who can now interrupt, and even reverse, the process of death; The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan, an unflinching look at the revived practice of buying young boys to keep as private dancers in northern Afghanistan; Pink Saris, the story of Sampat Pal, who fights to defend lower caste Indian women from domestic abuse and social injustice; and Scenes From a Teenage Killing which explores the impact of teenage killings on families and communities across Britain.

The News Coverage category recognises exceptional reporting of some of the most important and affecting events of the year. BBC One Ten O’Clock News is nominated for coverage of the handover of power from Gordon Brown to David Cameron; Channel 4 News for a programme covering the rescue of the Chilean miners and atrocities in the Democratic Republic of Congo. ITV News at Ten is nominated for their programme about the Cumbria murders and Sky News for their coverage of the Egypt crisis.

There are three nominations for the BBC in the Current Affairs category. BBC Two’s Secret Iraq, BBC One’s Kids in Care (Panorama) and BBC Four’s Zimbabwe’s Forgotten Children go up against Channel 4’s Lost Girls of South Africa, from the long-running Dispatches strand.

The New Media category rewards excellence and innovation in offering users a multi-platform TV experience. The nominees are LabUK/Brain Test Britain and Wallace and Gromit’s World of Invention, both from bbc.co.uk, E4.com’s Misfits and Malcolm Tucker: The Missing Phone, the first app to be nominated for a Television BAFTA. The nominations for the publicly-voted YouTube Audience Award were announced on Tuesday 19 April. They are: Big Fat Gypsy Weddings, Downton Abbey, The Killing, Miranda, The Only Way is Essex and Sherlock.

The Philips British Academy Television Awards will be hosted by Graham Norton and broadcast on BBC One on Sunday 22 May 2011.

Notes to Editors

For further information about previous nominations and BAFTA wins for this year’s nominees, please refer to the accompanying document: Previous Nominations and Wins 2011(124.5 KB)

Nominations by channel:

BBC One - 24

ITV1 - 8

Sky 1 - 3

BBC Two - 16

Channel 4 - 16

Sky Atlantic - 1

BBC Three - 1

More 4 - 3

Sky News - 1

BBC Four - 8

E4 - 6

Sky 3D - 1

bbc.co.uk - 2

E4.com - 1

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